Plants that welcome the stranger,Sea-swept and driven astern,Beloved by the wide-world ranger—Seaweed, tussock, and fern.

-Henry Lawson, 1910

Chocolate Carrageen Pudding

Our Thoughts:

Carrageen, or carraigín, is a wonderful foraged seaweed from the coasts of Ireland. Historically, it has been used as a binding agent in foods, as well as a clarifying agent in brewing. We order ours direct from foragers in Ireland, although it is available in most bulk herb sections, and in many home brewing stores.

The custard itself is interestingly savory, while still clearly a dessert. The carrageen adds a slight, unoffensive sea flavor that’s hard to place if one doesn’t know the secret ingredient. For those that enjoy a sweeter dessert, the sugar content can be increased, and other flavorings can be added as well.

Carrageen pudding has made more than one appearance at the dinner table in our house, equally suited to dinners for Game of Thrones and Downton Abbey. A relatively quick and easy set pudding to make, it’s an winner in our books.

Why it should be in the Next Book:

This pudding is a perfect dessert for GRRM to include in the next books. It’s use of seaweed as a binding agent, and just a bit of decadent cocoa powder for flavor makes it an ideal course to be served on the Fingers. We imagine Littlefinger enjoying a bite of it, having funded the import of the exotic flavorings, but still unable to shake his seaweedy origins. :)

Recipe for Chocolate Carrageen Pudding

Ingredients:

10 oz. clean, dry carrageen (aka irish moss)

4 1/4 cup milk

1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

3 Tbs. cocoa powder

3 Tbs. sugar

1 egg, separated

Soak the carrageen in warm water for 10 minutes, then strain and place in a saucepan with the milk. Bring to a boil and simmer for 20-30 minutes, until the seaweed is exuding jelly. Pour milk through a sieve, and push as much of the carrageen jelly through as you can into the milk.

Add a small amount of milk to the cocoa powder and stir till it forms a paste. Add to the strained milk with the sugar, egg yolk, and vanilla extract, and mix well. Whisk the egg white to stiff peaks and gently fold into the custard. Pour the custard into serving dishes, and allow to set overnight in the refrigerator.

There is a really cool little home brew store in Woodland Hills called The Home Wine, Beer and Cheesemaking Shop that had carrageen cut and in little flakes. That’s what I used for this recipe. They were super helpful! It’s the only place I’ve been able to find it.

It does indeed look very good, but unfortunately chocolate was not available in medieval Europe (which Westeros is, admittedly loosely, based on) and so far there’s evidence in the books that chocolate is available in the Game of Thrones universe, either. Maybe another flavor of carrageen pudding would be more appropriate for the books? Pistachios were available in medieval Europe, for example.

Unfortunately, it did not work at all. I don’t know if we got the wrong kind of carrageen somehow or if the initial soaking times aren’t long enough to accomplish what seems to be the thought but as soon as we put the moss into the milk, it almost instantly absorbed all of the liquid and left nothing to try to cook out of the moss. We added more liquid and had the same result. In the end, we had to throw everything out.

My assumption is that soaking the carrageen is supposed to saturate it so that it doesn’t absorb any other liquids and will cook out to release the gelatin. I would like to be able to try again, but with the cost of the moss I can’t be excited about it without at least some understanding of what went wrong.

Hi Mark, sad to hear you had trouble with the recipe! Yes, the initial soak is to rinse some of the salt from the moss, and also to resaturate it. The moss should be fully plumped out, and a bit gooey before it goes in with the milk. It looks like you bought the correct kind of moss. I buy from a different vendor- perhaps the dehydration techniques are different between vendors. If you do decide to try again, forget about the time I gave in the recipe- look at your ingredients. When the moss looks like it has absorbed all the water it can, and is slick, it’s time to add it to your milk. Good luck, and let us know how it goes!

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